Thunderball: The Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Cut

Thunderball is my favorite Bond film of Connery's tenure unpopular opinion I know. As much as I love the film I understand it has problems bloat being the biggest. Many scenes even I admit go on way longer than they should, this movie was groundbreaking for new underwater scenes something that had never been done before and its apparent they wanted to show off this break through.
I have already watched lapis molari Tomorrow Never Lies edit and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and he has done the same here as well reducing the underwater scenes was obvious and now more palatable and are much better paced especially the removal of that bad green screen at the end between Largo and Bond No sudden jarring edits either.
I do have qualms though the sound editing is off the voices are low compared to music and other sounds I got jump scared when the jet engine suddenly came on when James and the nurse were talking. Speaking of while I appreciate trying to restructure the beginning so the story is more in focus and James doesn't look like a future sexual harassments case it comes at the cost of motivation. Bond now investigates because he saw an ambulance pull in as if people don't have accidents at spas and health clinics and they may not want to disturb others. The scene removal of "grenades' being thrown into the water when bond is taking pictures of the yacht it no longer makes sense that he swims onto a beach and hitch hikes instead of just going back to Q immediately for the pictures.
I still recommend this edit while a few bad scenes and dodgy audio quality (the editor does provide subtitles) its still a fun watch the reduced underwater scenes alone reduce a lot of the tedium.

I like Thunderball quite a bit, but it certainly suffers from a bloated runtime, too much speed ramping, and way too many unnecessary underwater scenes, usually showing us every single second of some henchmen moving a nuclear bomb around. I think the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang edit is an interesting experiment with several things I like very much that are certainly improvements, but overall, I don't feel it can replace the theatrical for me, even with the admitted downsides listed above.

On the plus side of this edit, the cold opening fight scene and the final battle between Bond and Largo aboard the Disco Volante are much improved with some excellent work on mitigating speed ramping. Similarly, many of those glacially paced underwater scenes are either completely excised or edited down to a tolerable length. Overall, the video editing is pretty crisp; there are some jarring transitions throughout, but mostly they're invisible. Similarly, audio editing can be a bit abrupt on occasion but generally is ok.

So let's get into the two downsides as I see them.

The first is a technical note: the volume level of the dialogue was a little low on my system compared to the sound effects and score, which were almost deafening at times when the dialogue was at a discernible volume. (I have a 6.1 surround sound system with high end speakers and receiver.)

The second downside is a more general note. In the editor's effort to cut out unnecessary scenes and quicken the pacing, I felt it went a little extreme in the other direction. A scalpel would have sufficed, but instead a machete was used. Certainly, the first major section of the film where this becomes obvious is at Shrublands. Reconfiguring the scenes between Bond and the nurse really doesn't work, not only for the relationship between them which now runs hot and cold all over the place, but also because Bond is clearly suspicious and watching out for strange activity when he doesn't yet have any reason. Similarly, it doesn't make any sense when Bond goes spying on the Disco Volante and comes back to a beach so far from town that he has to hitch a ride. In the original cut, he's chased off and thrown off course to make his escape. In this version, he's never discovered, so why swim back to a place so far away from where he's staying? (There's the added confusion of the bad guys talking to each other about Bond's spying on the boat and arguing over whether they should have tried to kill him.)

Those are just two examples. There are quite a few more I could list where narrative and clarity suffer to appease a faster pace; a pace that, while by no means breakneck, is perhaps a little aggressive for a film of this time period in this franchise. Part of the appeal of the 007 films (for me, at least) is the leisurely slow build and escalating tension that leads to an exciting finale. While the theatrical cut is more glacial than leisurely, I feel that this edit takes it a bit far in the opposite direction.

All that said, this is an admirable effort and there was certainly talent and skill applied here. I would love to see a more restrained edit that implemented the best features of this version. In conclusion, I do recommend this fan edit but with reservations.